Baconcore
BaconCore, otherwise know by it's official name of "Extended Allegiance" or "EAlleg" was a core created by Bacon_00 in spring 2003. It was not popularly known as "BaconCore" until long after it's demise, though the term was coined fairly early on. Extended Allegiance in all of it's iterations, henceforth referred to as "BaconCore", was based on Spunkmeyer's Alleg+ core.
Creation
BaconCore was created with one intention: To have more tech to research in a given game of Allegiance. Bacon was not satisfied with the typical 2 or 3 levels of tech in the Allegiance tech tree, and decided to add 2 more levels. For instance, in a "normal" core, there are three levels of Minigun: Minigun 1, Minigun 2, and Minigun 3. Bacon added Minigun 4 and Minigun 5. BaconCore featured these additional levels of technology for each weapon and upgrade in all tech paths. According to Bacon, it was an insane amount of work.
Bacon had never used the core editor ICE before, and used his vision of more tech levels to teach himself how to modify a core. He spent roughly 8-10 hours a day over the period of a 3 day weekend to create and test the initial core (with many more hours invested as the core evolved). To this day he is not sure why he did it.
Core theme
As BaconCore progressed, new research bases were introduced, along with new ship classes. In order to attain the higher level tech, a commander would have to buy an "Advanced" tech base. Current "Advanced" bases were renamed "Enhanced" bases. So, in order to buy Minigun 3, a commander would have to buy an Enhanced Expansion Complex. Then, after this was purchased, the commander would research "Advanced Expansion" within the Enhanced Expansion Complex to buy the ability to build an Advanced Expansion Complex. He or she would then buy and build an Advanced Expansion Complex, which would then open up the ability to research Minigun 4 and Minigun 5, along with 2 additional levels of technology for everything research-able in the Expansion tech path. This same formula held true for Supremacy, Tactical, Garrison, and Shipyard. As mentioned, the later versions of BaconCore also featured new ships. In Expansion, a Heavy Interceptor could be upgraded to an Assault Interceptor -- at the price of buying an Advanced Expansion Complex and researching the appropriate devel. As before, this held true for the other tech paths as well. Advanced Fighters and Stealth Fighters could be upgraded to Heavy Fighters and Heavy Stealth Fighters, Bombers and Troop Transports were given Assault variations, and capital ships were also given "sequels."
Needless to say, these 2 extra levels of tech were extremely expensive. The idea behind the incredible expense was that these high-end technologies would be used in the event of an incredibly long game, where both teams had maxxed out their tech paths yet still couldn't defeat one another (an occurrence that has since become a rarity). It also could open up a new set of options in a regular game -- the commander could buy a 2nd tech base, or they could save and fully max out their current one. It was a financial risk as well as a time consuming one, but the payoff would, theoretically, be well worth it. A third intended use for this "uber-tech" was to break up a "turtling" team, meaning a team that had been reduced to one sector and camped their last remaining alephs with every available pilot. In a decent sized game, this could mean 10 or 15 people (or many more) camping one aleph. Needless to say, busting this camp is a time consuming and tedious process; unless the offensive team had minigun 5 Assault Interceptors to lead the assault.
Reception
The reception of BaconCore was quite hostile, directly leading to it's demise. Players criticized the "cheesiness" of the high-level tech and claimed that it was not a core that could support quality games. Bacon hosted several testing sessions in attempts to reduce the "cheese-factor," but the playerbase quickly labeled it a "whore-core," reducing it to nothing more than a play-it-once novelty for most of the community. Bacon's intention was not to create a "whore-core," but to expand the tech tree in an interesting and useful way. However, the addition of 2 levels of tech created critical balance issues, which, combined with low player-interest and poor support from server admins, resulted in the core slowly fading away. Bacon may or may not have "quit" Allegiance due to these events.
One brief attempt was made to resurrect BaconCore, but Bacon lacked the motivation needed to create a usable, balanced core, and retired the project. He allowed DrStrnglove unrestricted use of the .igc core file for the creation of his core, RPS.
Other features
BaconCore also featured new particle effects for the higher level weapons, resulting in green minigun spray and yellow-blue gatt bullets, among many others. This was somewhat novel at the time, as few new particle effects had been seen outside of the player-made factions.
BaconCore also featured a gag missile titled the "BFM," or the "Big F***ing Missile," which would quite literally crash the server. It was coded to turn on a dime, destroy asteroids, and pursue a target until he/she either died or entered an aleph, which the missile would then resonate. The BFM was attained by researching a secret combination of devels in the tech tree long since forgotten by modern man. Rumors of a "BFG," or "Big F***ing Gun," persist to this day.
BaconCore today
There are no current plans to re-invent or re-release BaconCore.
| The Allegiance Cores |
|
|---|
